KATHMANDU, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- Over 200,000 Nepali girls have been trafficked to red light areas of India, Nepali state-run newspaper The Rising Nepal on Sunday quoted a high-rank official from the Ministry of Home Affairs as saying.

Dr. Govinda Prasad Kusum, Secretary for Ministry of Home Affairs, said that approximately 7,000 to 10,000 girls are being trafficked to India every month.

"We have a large number of Nepalese girls in India's red light areas and controlling traffickers is proving troublesome because we share open borders with India and traffickers have a dozen ways to cross borders without being noticed," said Kusum at the launch of "the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons" on Friday.

According to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), "the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons" offers the first global assessment on the scope of human trafficking and what is being done to fight it. It includes an overview of trafficking patterns, legal steps taken in response and country specific information on reported cases of trafficking in persons, victims and prosecutions.

According to the report, the most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation which makes up 79 percent of the victim population, and the victims of sexual exploitation are predominantly women and girls. The second most common form of human trafficking is indicated to be forced labour at 18 percent which is less frequently detected and reported than trafficking for sexual exploitation.

While answering queries from the floor on Friday, secretary for Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare Brinda Hada Bhattarai said that the government has separated approximately one million rupees (around 13,000 U.S. dollars) for the rehabilitation of victims of trafficking.

The speakers at the launch also said that apart from India, Nepalese girls have also been trafficked to Gulf countries, Malaysia and China's Hong Kong, but the number of Nepalese girls in the brothels of these areas is unknown.